("VORWARTS" 1878)

I

[162-164] At the "Fiftieth Congress of German Natural Scientists and Physicians" in Munich, in September 1877, Professor von Nägeli of Munich again touched upon the well-known lecture delivered earlier by his colleague from Berlin—Du Bois-Reymond—and delivered a remarkable address on "the boundaries of scientific knowledge." One must do justice to the Munich professor: in truthfulness and clarity he significantly surpassed his predecessor from Berlin, but he nonetheless failed to rise to the level of his epoch. He almost clarified the question; but the small, concluding detail which he overlooked is precisely the cardinal point—it concerns the great abyss separating physics from metaphysics, sober science from romantic faith.

His predecessor Du Bois-Reymond, as is known, sought to prove that such an impassable boundary does indeed exist and that faith must in any case be assigned its own special domain. It is only to this role as a small refuge for religious romanticism that his report owes its apparent significance and its wide circulation. Since then the zealots of the incomprehensible have been exulting. True, Professor von Nägeli is not altogether pleased with this exultation, but his elevated professorial position does not permit him to conduct the struggle with full decisiveness. Having proved clearly, precisely, and definitively to his predecessor that he did not understand natural-scientific knowledge, he concludes as follows:

"If Du Bois-Reymond concluded his report with the annihilating words: 'Ignoramus et ignorabimus'*, then I should like to conclude by expressing a conditional but consoling view, that the fruits of our investigation are not merely knowledge, but genuine cognitions, containing within themselves the germ of an almost (!) infinite—

* — "We do not know and shall not know." — Ed.

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